The Hierarchy of Digital Distractions

David McCandless (British, born 1971)
of Information Is Beautiful (UK, est. 2009)

2009

Illustrator software

David McCandless used his own
experience to create a pyramid diagram
of the interferences constantly gnawing
at our attention span in this socially
networked, data-consuming world.
Devices and websites, represented
by logos, are sorted by how potentially
distracting they are, stacked according
to which activities and notifications
are more likely to cause us to abandon
whatever we are doing: a call on the
land line trumps Facebook, at least until
the arrival of a text message. McCandless
has also calibrated the relative importance
of different kinds of e-mail,
tweets, and Facebook notifications,
all of which hover between the bottom
of the pyramid, representing “Any kind
of actual work,” and the top, marked
“Partner shuts the lid of laptop on
your fingers.” McCandless also takes
on topics of global importance in his
visualizations.